What They Say:
“Capa’s Island”
Sio starts intensive training at the Dogoo facility with war photographer Robert Capa. She manages to make some friends on base, but the reality of everyone’s situation there is harsh.
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ogura’s got it a little rough now that she’s decided to save the world, but such is the burden these shonen warriors have to bear. The simulation (that she doesn’t know is a simulation) proves that, alone, she isn’t quite up to snuff yet. Plus, she doesn’t have internet or phone service. How will she tweet?
She has to go through a tough regiment of training and she’s only given the motivation of “the commander has high hopes for you.” I’m just wondering why do all this at all because the training isn’t really adding much to the show itself, it’s just showing how strict their training methods are. Inevitably, when Ogura’s on the field, she’ll be grateful she had all the training.
When she’s ambushed by a whole bunch of people from a whole bunch of different countries (a Philippine even offers her a banana!), my questions of why raise even more. The setup is such that it looks like another of Capa’s illusions and it’s distractingly predatory. It turns out that they’re just regular soldiers at the base who want to meet their idol who saved Taiwan almost single-handedly.
The first even remotely interesting part of the episode comes up around the 15 minute mark when Capa calls the soldier’s she’s making friends with “just a shield.” And even then, it is but a fleeting moment.
The predatory nature of the show (the short shorts from the first and this episode when Ogura’s waking up, the soldiers’ unnecessary demeanors, her reactions to being hurt, and Capa literally undressing a copy of her) gets really distracting and downright stupid. It only gets worse when Capa uses his copies to take pictures of Ogura in a swimsuit and presumably sells them to the soldiers. But how did he even get the copies into the swimsuits? What a perv he is.
In Summary:
These episodes are definitely necessary in a way, and I’ll readily admit that. We need to know how Ogura learns how to fight in episode format. But they do not need to be executed in this way. As it is, Nobunagun was, for the first time for me, boring. Dumb. Insulting. Other negative adjectives. Its saving grace is the last two minutes or so when we have promise of action again. Unless the content gets better, Nobunagun will be all style and no substance.
Grade: D+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: PS3, 32 in. Olevia 720p TV
Revisiting this show via reviews etc… as I dropped it not long after this episode. I like to see if I was wrong (or hasty) and am willing to give things a second chance. I absolutely loved this show’s beginning. But once this episode arrived on the scene, it really made me disgusted. The earlier episodes set it up so high, that the fall, was just too far for me. I felt like it lost it’s way and was trying to be something other than what it set out to be. I felt tricked into loving something that then I hated. As you and other reviewers have completed it and largely enjoyed it, I may yet as well. But so far, I have not been able to recover from this episode. Thank you for the reviews.